To The Victor Go the Spoils
by Collegekid2006
Summary: Shawn wasn't Yang's first target. Fifteen years ago, another Spencer was on the Yang case. Fifteen years ago, before the divorce. Before Henry walked away from the force for good. Before he moved to Florida. Before it all there was Yang.
1. Chapter 1

**Santa Barbara****—1993**

"Spencer," Chief Frank Kemp stuck his head out of his office, gesturing at Henry. "My office. Now."

Henry nodded, quickly making his way across the precinct.

He stepped into the Chief's office. The shorter, balding man was sitting behind his desk, his hands folded authoritatively on top as he surveyed the three people in front of him.

In addition to Henry, who had just walked in and was now looking for a seat, there was Karen Vick, a young detective who had started with the precinct just a few years before, and her partner, Jonah Talbot. They were both sitting on the edge of their chairs, a nervous energy palpable between them.

"Sit," Kemp ordered Henry when he took too long to find a seat. Henry quickly obeyed, his heart starting to pound slightly as he realized he was about to be let in on something big.

"Chief, we don't need Spencer on this," Jonah was already protesting, shooting Henry an apologetic glance out of the corner of his eye. "No offense, Spencer."

Kemp cut off the argument with a sharp wave of his hand. "Drop it. He's in, like it or not. We don't have time--"

"Time?" Henry repeated in confusion, not even letting the Chief finish his thought as he already felt his body starting to race against the unknown clock. "Sir, if this is time sensitive, shouldn't you just tell me what the hell is going on instead of arguing about whether or not to tell me?"

Kemp nodded slowly, running his hand over his glistening nearly-bare scalp. He picked a yellow envelope up off his desk and tossed it to Henry, who caught it and immediately opened it, pulling out the single paper that was inside.

"What--?" he started to ask, but stopped when he saw was printed on it.

It was a photocopy of a newspaper article about Jonah Talbot's latest bust. He had managed to infiltrate a smuggling ring, which had led the DA to file twenty-seven indictments.

In the article, he was grinning at the camera, his arms folded almost cockily across his chest, every strand of his short-clipped brown hair perfectly in place.

Across the bottom of the photocopy, someone had cut and pasted newspaper letters out to form sentences.

**He busted them--**

**It's time to bust him.**

**Will he still be grinning when Round 1 ends?**

**Only time will tell.**

Underneath the words, there was a photograph of a cat clock, its tail swinging back and forth like a metronome. The hands indicated the time was 2:45.

Underneath that, someone had signed it with a single word—**YANG.**

Instinctively, Henry looked down at his watch as soon as he read the note.

It was already 12:45.

Assuming the note was meant for today, they only had two hours to figure out what the hell this note meant.

"It arrived in the mail today," the Chief pressed on quickly, bringing him up to speed. "We have FBI analysts coming in to look at it, but we don't have time to wait for them to get here. Not if 2:45 means two hours from now."

"I'm telling you, Chief, it's just a local crackpot," Jonah spoke up, swiping his hand through the air carelessly. "I stepped on a lot of toes with that bust. Someone's just trying to get me to back off so I won't testify. It's not going to work."

"If it's just a crackpot," Karen spoke up, looking concerned as she glanced between her partner and Henry. "Why set a time for round 1 to end? And why wouldn't they tell you exactly what that means?"

"Because it doesn't mean _anything!_" Jonah argued, his pale green eyes flashing defiantly as he snatched the letter away from Henry and tossed it back on the Chief's desk. He stood up, his thin, wiry frame springing from his chair and towards the door in one easy motion. "I'm not going to waste my time shaking in my boots over this stupid, vague whatever-the-hell it is."

He left the office, the door shutting loudly behind him.

Karen sighed, shaking her head. "I think he's wrong," she murmured, her forehead creasing as she picked up the note and read it for what Henry guessed had to be the hundredth time. "This Yang, whoever they are…I don't think it's an idle threat."

"It's not," Henry agreed. "They signed their name. Whatever happens, this psycho wants credit. They want us to know who they are, and they want us to know there's not a damn thing we can do to stop them."


	2. Chapter 2

The next two hours clicked by slowly as Henry and Karen tried desperately to make sense of the cryptic message.

"Why is it a cat clock in the picture?" Henry asked after staring at it for forty-five minutes, no other epiphanies coming to him. "Why not just a standard analog clock? Or even a digital one?"

"I don't know," Karen replied thoughtfully, taking the paper back from him and looking it over. "Is it a clue? Something to do with cats…?"

"What does a cat have to do with anything?"

"I'm not sure," Karen sighed. "We don't even know what we're looking for…what does it mean that round one is going to end?"

"I have no idea…but does Jonah own a cat?" Henry asked, searching for any connection he could think of. "Or his kids?"

"No," Karen shook her head. "His son just got a puppy a few weeks ago, and I think his daughter has some kind of rodent in a cage. A hamster…guinea pig…something like that."

"So, they have pets," Henry concluded, seeing a glimmer of hope in this observation. "Maybe the cat is just a generic symbol for pets."

"You think someone is going after Jonah's puppy at 2:45?"

Karen sounded dubious about this theory, but she couldn't offer anything better.

"No," Henry admitted. "It doesn't make sense…but we don't have anything else to go on. The note says round one is ending, which means this is just the beginning. The warm-up. There's more to come, and we're going to have to learn the rules as we go. Which is exactly what this Yang wants."

Karen looked across the precinct at Jonah, who despite his stubborn refusal to take the threat seriously kept glancing up at the clock on the wall.

"It's getting to him," she murmured.

Henry nodded in agreement. "He's called home eight times over the last hour."

"He could be right," Karen offered hopefully. "It could just be some nut trying to get under his skin. He pissed off a lot of people…"

She stopped, her words trailing off. Neither of them believed it. There was something dark and sinister starting to brew beneath the surface.

And it was about to blow up in Jonah's face.

They continued to watch the detective diligently working on reports. His face was set in a hard, determined grimace, but there was an urgency in the way his fingers flew across the page.

It was definitely starting to get to him.

Henry sighed, shaking his head. "Whatever the hell is going on, we'll know in an hour how bad it is."

* * *

They didn't know in an hour.

The call didn't come in until almost five o'clock that night.

Around 3:30, Jonah has glanced back at them from across the precinct, gesturing at the clock with his thumb. "Guess round one goes to me," he'd crowed victoriously.

"I hope so," Henry had nodded, not the least bit convinced it was all going to end that simply.

Jonah, however, seemed to have relaxed. The cocky grin remained plastered across his face until the call.

"Chief," an officer called across the room. "Break-in at Talbot's Pet Store on Sunset. Homicide."

Even from the other side of the station, Henry saw the look on Jonah's face immediately change. He suddenly went pale, the grin vanishing in a heartbeat. Karen saw it, too. They both stood up, crossing the precinct.

"Jonah?" Karen asked. "What--?"

Jonah blinked in shock, as if he was in the middle of a nightmare. "My cousin--" he stammered, standing up and almost tripping over his own feet.

"What cousin?" Karen pressed on, but Jonah was already rushing out the door. Henry and Karen followed, getting into his car behind him. He didn't object or tell them to get out as he pulled away. He didn't explain what was going on, and they didn't ask questions. They just drove in tense silence until the arrived at the scene.

The front window of Talbot's Pet Shop had been smashed in. It was already blocked off by yellow police tape and an officer was standing guard at the front door. He let the three detectives pass without questioning them.

The front room of the store hadn't been touched. They pushed past the cages filled with squawking birds and chattering mice. Through the open back door, they could see more officers in the back room.

That must be where the crime scene was.

The three of them stopped in the doorway, frozen in horror at the sight that met their eyes.

The scene was ugly and covered in blood. The harsh fluorescent lights reflected off the sickening puddles, but non of them were thinking about that at the moment. Their eyes were locked on the body in the middle of the room.

She was a woman in her mid-thirties. She had been tied to a chair and gagged. Her head was slumped over her chest, and the neat slit across her throat testified where the pools of blood had come from.

Jonah was shaking as he finally forced himself to take a step into the room.

"You know her?" Henry asked quietly.

Jonah nodded stiffly, his eyes wide as he made a slow, deliberate circle around the body.

"Sarah…" he whispered, his voice hoarse. "She's my cousin. I haven't talked to her in years. I haven't even seen her since the family reunion a few years ago."

Henry cast his eyes around the room, spotting a cat clock hanging on the wall. The face had been smashed, forever frozen at 2:45.

He nudged Karen, pointing silently at it. She nodded, closing her eyes painfully.

"Oh, God," she murmured.

One of the other officers in the room spoke up, handing Jonah a folded piece of paper.

"That was in her pocket," he said quietly.

Jonah's fingers trembled as he opened it.

It was more cut out letters, signed by Yang.

**Round 1—**

**Will you play my little game now?**


	3. Chapter 3

Jonah was so shaken he couldn't even drive back to the station. Henry drove and Karen rode in the passenger seat while Jonah rode in back, still pale and trembling.

"How was I supposed to figure that out?" he was mumbling to himself. "How the hell was I supposed to know?"

"You weren't," Henry told him.

Jonah looked up, meeting his eyes in the rearview mirror. "I wasn't close to Sarah…there was no reason for Yang to go after her."

"That's the point," Henry agreed, nodding. "This was just the first round. It wasn't meant to hurt. Not really. He's not going for the jugular yet. It was just meant to confuse the hell out of you, to get in your head. To prove Yang is smarter and you're playing his game now."

Jonah groaned, dropping his head against the seat behind him. "Shit. This is just round one. It's not going to let up, is it?"

"I don't know," Henry shook his head slowly, glancing at Karen next to him. "But I doubt it. Round one proved this sick son of a bitch is serious."

* * *

When they got back to the station, word had already spread like wildfire.

Everyone knew about Yang now.

And they all knew about Round One.

Jonah had recovered from the initial shock, and he did the best he could to pretend he didn't notice the stares and whispers behind his back…but he noticed.

And Henry could already tell they were bugging the hell out of him.

Yang was under his skin now.

Not that Henry could blame him for being shaken up.

Who wouldn't be?

He spent the next three hours numbly sifting through files and reports, trying to put the day out of his mind.

Trying to prepare for Round Two.

But how the hell did you mentally prepare for something you couldn't predict?

At eight o'clock that evening, they should have all been home.

They should have been home for hours. Karen, Henry and Jonah were all pushing eighteen straight hours of working, but none of them had even thought about leaving.

Not when Round Two could start at any moment.

Henry looked up from his desk, spotting his wife across the precinct. He stood up, their eyes meeting across the room.

"What--?" he started to ask as she approached, but stopped when she held up the file she was carrying.

"Yang," she said quietly, her eyes betraying the depth of her concern without her having to say another word. "They called me in to do an emergency session with Detective Talbot."

Henry nodded, but didn't say anything.

He didn't tell her he was on the case, too.

He knew he didn't have to.

She was watching his face now, knowing every subtlety in the way he avoided her gaze, in the way his muscles tensed ever so slightly as she mentioned the name Yang.

"Henry," she spoke softly after a moment of watching him, lowering her tone as he confirmed her suspicions through his silence. "Be careful."

He glanced up at her, not the least bit surprised by her ability to read him. "Maddie, I'm not--"

She cut him off with a gentle hand on his arm, squeezing his bicep. "I know. I'm just saying…Be careful. I spent the last hour looking over this file. He doesn't have any limits, Henry. This is only going to get worse."

"I know," Henry nodded. "I'll be careful."

"It's not just that," Madeline told him. "He doesn't have any rules. He doesn't have any set parameters. You're going out your depth here, Henry. You won't be able to use logic or sense or emotion to get into this guy's head. You're not going to have anything to fall back on. Psychologically, you're walking into a hornet's nest."

"Yang's not after me," Henry pointed out. "I'm not the one you should be worried about."

"No," Madeline sighed as he walked away, her eyes following him. "But you're the one I'm worried about."

* * *

It took three more days for Round 2 to start.

Three days of waiting, the axe poised over their heads ready to fall.

Three days at an impasse, knowing something was coming but not being able to do a damn thing to stop it.

Finally, it came in the mail. Just like the first note.

It was addressed directly to Jonah this time.

The words were simple enough, once again cut out of newspaper.

**Did you learn your lesson?**

**You can't ignore me.**

**Maybe you'll do better in rounds 2 and 3.**

But what made Jonah's heart stop this time was the picture taped to the bottom of the note.

It was a Polaroid of a Kindergarten graduation. A student was shaking his teacher's hand as he accepted his certificate, his gap-toothed smile aimed directly at the camera.

Jonah almost dropped the paper.

The boy in the picture was his son.


	4. Chapter 4

Karen and Henry read the note over Jonah's shoulder, then glanced at each other questioningly.

"Rounds two and three," Jonah murmured, his eyes darting frantically over the paper. "Oh, God. My kids. Sammy's Round Two. Kate must be--"

He stopped, suddenly frozen in place as the realization hit him like a baseball bat. "Kate must be Round Three."

He dropped the note on the floor, running back to his desk and grabbing the phone. Henry snatched it from its crumpled heap before following, Karen right behind him.

Jonah's fingers were drumming nervously as he waited for his call to connect. "Jen?" He spoke quickly, his voice clipped and on the verge of cracking, but he held himself together long enough to get the rapid sentence out. "Get Katie out of daycare. Right now."

There was a pause while he waited for his wife to question him, but only for a second.

He couldn't waste the time.

"Jen," he cut her off a moment. "Please. Just listen. Get her, go home, lock the door. Don't answer the phone, don't open the door for anyone. I'll be home as soon as I can."

He hung up before she could answer, knowing she would listen. He spun back around, facing Henry and Karen again. His eyes were blazing with fear and anger, and Henry could see his mind whirling a thousand miles an hour.

"What about Sammy?" Karen asked quickly. "Do you need me to get him from somewhere?"

Jonah shook his head, finally starting to think straight again, at least for the moment. "He's at summer camp up in the mountains for the week. His first time being away from home. Yang can't—Goddamn it!" he kicked his desk, the hollow metal echoing loudly off the precinct walls. "Goddamn it, he's going after my son! I have to get up there--"

"No," Henry cut his off quickly. "It'll be faster to call it in and have a trooper pick him up and bring him back. You go home. Stay with your family. We'll make sure a trooper gets Sammy. What camp is he at?"

Jonah blinked, this information suddenly vanishing from his brain for no discernable reason. "I…I don't know," he mumbled, struggling even form a coherent thought. "Pine…something. Garden Pines."

"Okay," Henry nodded. "I'll call it in. Go home, Jonah. Yang didn't give us a timeline this time…so until we figure out what he's planning, just stay home. Or check into a hotel for the night."

"Right," Jonah nodded slowly, backing away towards the door. "A hotel…probably best…"

He turned around slowly and was out the door, looking more than a little dazed.

Karen turned to Henry. "Do you think--?"

"I don't know," Henry shook his head. "Yang's capable of anything at this point. And he's not making it up as he goes along. He already has a Round Three planned…he knows exactly what he's doing."

Karen sighed, looking down at the Polaroid of Sammy Talbot. "Kindergarten graduation was last month," she told him. "I remember Jonah taking the day off for it. That's when they got Sammy the puppy. Yang was there, Henry…he was planning this all along."

* * *

"It's probably nothing," the officer mumbled at his partner, rolling his eyes as they pulled into the school parking lot.

"I know," his partner shrugged. "Janitor probably tripped the alarm again. But we have to check it out."

"Yeah, yeah…"

They climbed out of the squad car wearily, shining their flashlights at the dark building before them, illuminating the words _Santa Barbara Day School_ that was embossed across the brick exterior.

"There's no one around," the first officer grunted, flashing his light around the empty parking lot.

"Wait," his partner spoke up, approaching the door.

It was open a crack, as if someone hadn't quite closed it all the way in their haste to exit.

They glanced at each other, then pushed it open, stepping inside the eerily quiet hallways.

Their lights reflected off the rows of lockers, but they didn't see anyone. The only sound was their echoing footsteps as they slowly made their way down the hallway.

"Hey!" the first one called, his voice bouncing back at him. "Anyone here? Police!"

He pressed on, not noticing his partner had stopped walking until he was a few yards ahead. He turned around.

"What are you doing?" he demanded, turning his light on his partner's face.

But he didn't get an answer.

The other officer was frozen in place, staring with wide eyes into an open classroom. His partner quickly came back, looking into the room.

"God," he whispered, his own eyes growing wide at the sight.

Slumped in her chair was a woman in her early twenties. She was surrounded by cut-out paper handprints, her face frozen in an expression of confused shock.

They stepped into the room, their lights illuminating the word _Kindergarten_ on the door as they did.

Across the blackboard, someone had written something in yellow chalk.

**Round Two.**

**-Yang**


	5. Chapter 5

Dr. Ella Markinson sat across from Henry in the Chief's office, waiting patiently for him to say something.

He was waiting just as patiently for her to tell him their time was up so he could get back to the case.

After the patrol had found Sammy Tolbot's teacher dead in her classroom a week ago, everyone on the case had been ordered to undergo psych evals. Madeline did them for Karen and Jonah, but the department had to call in someone else for Henry's to avoid any conflict of interest issues. He had insisted he was fine and didn't need an eval, but the Chief was adamant.

Which was fine with Henry.

He would just sit there for the required fifty minutes and say nothing.

"It's been a week," she said finally, breaking the icy silence that had been lingering between them for the last forty minutes. "Hasn't it?"

"The last letter from Yang came in a week ago," he confirmed with a slight nod, releasing the information carefully and only after an intense internal debate, as if he feared she might turn around and leak everything he said to the press.

"That's when they found the teacher's body?"

Henry stiffened, his fingernails digging into the arm of the chair as he continued nodding slowly, clearly still beating himself up over that. "We had it all wrong," he said quietly, coming as close as he'd come in a week to actually talking about it.

To actually admitting what he was feeling.

"How so?" She pushed a little harder now, not wanting to lose the ground she had just fought so hard to gain.

"We focused on the wrong part of the note…we were focusing on Jonah's kids. We were focusing on rounds two and three…we should have been focusing on the first line. _Did you learn your lesson?_ _That_ was the clue. The rest was just a distraction. He was going after the teacher in the picture, not the kid."

He stood up, pacing the length of the room while she followed him with her eyes, not even moving her head.

"He was testing us," Henry continued, stopping his pacing long enough to speak. "He wanted to see if we'd read the clues for what they were, or if the second it got personal we'd throw logic and reason out the window and go with our gut instincts. We went with our gut. All of us. We didn't even consider the teacher…we didn't consider anything but the kid. We failed. Damn it, we played right into his hands! We reacted exactly how he wanted us to! All we can do now is wait for him to hit us again."

He settled back down into the chair as Markinson jotted a few notes on her pad, meeting his eyes as she laid her pen aside. "Do you have any ideas who the next target might be?"

Henry shook his head slowly. "No…but we tipped our hand. We went after family first. We let a teacher die to protect his kids. Yang knows where we're most vulnerable now…and he's going to use it."

"What are you going to do?"

Henry shrugged, staring blankly down at the carpet a few feet in front of his shoes. "I don't know. So far, Jonah's been his only target…but Karen and I have been on the case since the beginning. Yang spent months setting this up on Jonah…He went to his kid's graduation. He took pictures. Researched his family. He knows exactly what he's doing, and he's probably working on us next…"

His eyes grew distant as his voice dropped subtly.

"Jonah flinched. The only way to beat Yang is to not flinch. You have to hold your cards close to your chest. He can't know where you bleed. He can't know how to hurt you. You can't let him see a moment of weakness, or someone is going to die."

"You can't go through the rest of your life without showing a single emotion, Henry."

"I have to," Henry returned, his voice growing stronger as determination settled over it. "I can't flinch."


	6. Chapter 6

Once Henry's session was over, he stepped out of the office and into the bullpen. He immediately spotted his wife across the room, sitting at his desk waiting for him.

She didn't see him right away, however, as she was looking at the only picture he kept at work. It was an old one, taken when Shawn was six years old, of the three of them on a family camping trip.

Even with it turned away from him now, Henry knew exactly what it looked like.

They were standing in front of a crystal clear lake, all wearing life jackets and holding canoe oars. They were smiling, ready for a day out on the water.

Madeline smiled up at him as he approached, turning the picture so he could see it. "He was so little back then," she mused almost sadly. "Remember how much he wanted to help you paddle? But he just kept splashing you instead."

"I remember," Henry nodded quietly, picking the picture up before putting it back down again.

For a moment, neither of them said anything else. They just looked at each other, their eyes speaking volumes.

"Are you coming home tonight?" she asked finally, leaning back in his chair. "I haven't seen you for more than a few minutes in five days."

He perched on the edge of the desk, his fingers running over to cool, hard wood. "I don't know. I have to work on this case."

She leaned across, her hand resting on his, her eyes meeting his pleadingly. "Henry. It wasn't your fault."

He pulled away from her touch, but remained seated as she stood up. "I read the file," she reminded him, forcing the conversation forward when he refused to respond. "I've talked to everyone on the case. I know what's going on. And it wasn't your fault. You didn't miss the clue. You weren't supposed to find it."

"Of course I wasn't!" Henry snapped. "None of us were! We found exactly what Yang wanted us to find, and that's the problem! He's making the rules, Mad. And we can't beat him until we get far enough ahead that we start making them."

"Listen to me," Madeline ordered softly, her hand resting on Henry's shoulder before slowly traveling up and grazing his cheek. "You can't beat him at all like this. Not when you stop sleeping. Not when you stop eating. Not when you obsess about it."

"I don't need to sleep," he shot back heatedly. "I need to stop this bastard from killing people. People are dying, Mad. And it's because I'm not reading the goddamn clues right."

She shook her head fervently, but she knew she was wasting her breath. Her husband's eyes were set in determination, his stubble-speckled jaw clenching stubbornly.

She met his tired, black-rimmed eyes steadily, searching them. Analyzing them.

But for once, they were empty.

For once, she couldn't see through him to the truth.

"Don't do this, Henry," she almost pleaded. "Don't make this personal. Come home, spend some time with Shawn, for God's sake eat something—"

"I can't," he shook his head. "We should be getting the prints from the classroom back from the lab any minute. There might be something there--"

"Do you honestly think Yang is stupid enough to leave prints?" Madeline demanded, her pleading tone shifting to one of annoyance. "The world isn't going to fall apart because you come home for one night when you don't even have a new lead!"

"Yes, it is!" Henry very nearly shouted back.

She blinked in surprise, suddenly seeing a flash of something in his eyes.

Something she recognized.

Fear.

Suddenly, a few more pieces seemed to fall into place.

"You think you're protecting us," she whispered. "You're not coming home because--God, Henry. You can't protect us by isolating yourself. That's the one thing you can't afford to do right now. If you close yourself off, if you shut us out now, you're not going to survive this. Yang will eat you alive. Don't do it, Henry. Don't shut us out. Don't try to do this on your own."

"I'm not--"

"Yes, you are."

Her hand ran over his arm, feeling every taut, tense muscle. "I have to leave for my convention tomorrow," she reminded him softly. "I'll be gone all next week. You have to make sure Shawn gets to school and is home by curfew."

"I know how to raise my son," Henry nodded.

"I know. That's not the point."

"Then, what--?"

"The point is you need to go home. You need to be home."

Henry sighed, one hand running over the back of his neck as he finally let his muscles start to relax under her touch.

"I'll try, Mad."

* * *

He went home that night.

He tried to forget about the case, tried to put it out of his mind, but every sound outside made his nerves stand on end.

It wasn't a matter of if Yang would strike again, it was a matter of when. And every moment that passed without another letter, without another clue, just made him all that much more certain that whatever was coming next was going to be big.

He didn't sleep at all, even though he tried. Every time he closed his eyes, they snapped open again.

Madeline was next to him, breathing easily, her arm draped over his chest.

He was flinching.

He could feel it.

Just by being here, just by trying to sleep when he should have been working on the case, he was flinching.

Around 2 AM, the phone rang.

Madeline shifted, but didn't wake up.

She never woke up to answer the phone this late.

Henry reached over, his heart pounding before he even got the words out. "Hello?"

"Henry," Karen's voice spoke through the other end, her words rapid and clipped. "Get back here. We just got another letter from Yang."


End file.
